The poor people, terrified by this enormous tax, and by the persecution which overtook the prime movers in the remonstrance, as the secretary of the commission on the Tinzimat informs us, "swallowed painfully their grievances and no longer dared to continue their just reclamations to the government." The Ottoman government, intimidated by the threats of the ecclesiastical Janissaries of the Cara-Casan, "was obliged to yield to the force of circumstances, as they were used to do in the time of their terrible confrères, and abandoned the question completely."
The Greek revolution has also in one way aggravated the lot of the Christians of Turkey, by causing the compulsory or voluntary removal from the capital of the principal merchants and other Christians of superior station and influence, who formed the greatest check upon the unworthy clerical rulers. Under the name of "primates of the nation," they had a share in the management of ecclesiastical finances and other temporal affairs, and as their compatriot, Mr. Pitzipios, affirms, "these good citizens, inspired by their charitable [{14}] sentiments, and encouraged by the influence which they had with the Ottoman government, repressed greatly the abuses of the clergy, and moderated, as far as they were able, the vexations of the people." [Footnote 7] The men of this class who remained in Constantinople were removed by the government, as foreigners, from all share in the administration of Christian' affairs, and their places filled with the creatures of the patriarchal clique, men of the lowest rank and character, who were ready tools for every nefarious work.
[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 147.]
As a natural consequence of the faithless abuse of the sacred religious and civil trust committed to the higher clergy, they and their inferior clergy are detested and despised by their people, who are held in subjection to them only by physical coercion. Mr. Pitzipios assures us that there is among them a very strong predisposition to Protestantism. A form of deism, introduced by Theophilus Cairy, a Greek priest, who died in prison in the year 1851, made great progress before it was suppressed by the civil power, and is now secretly working with great activity in Greece and Turkey.
We cannot but think that the last and most degraded phase of the Byzantine Bas Empire, impersonated in the schismatical patriarchate of Constantinople, is destined soon to pass away. We hope and expect soon to see the end of the Ottoman power, which alone sustains this odious ecclesiastico-political tyranny. The signs of the political horizon appear to indicate that Russia is destined to gain possession of the ancient seat of the Greek empire. However this may be, if the Church of Constantinople, and the other far more ancient churches within her sphere of jurisdiction, are ever to be restored to a healthy Christian vitality, and made to reflourish as of old, it must be by a thorough ecclesiastical reformation, which shall sweep away the present dominant clique in the clergy and the whole policy which they have established.
The beginning of this reformation has already been inaugurated in the kingdom of Greece. The bishops of that kingdom, in recovering freedom from the odious yoke of Constantinople, have recovered the character of Christian prelates and pastors. The severe remarks which we have made respecting the Oriental hierarchy must be understood as applicable only to that particular clique who have heretofore made themselves dominant through intrigue and violence. There no doubt have been, and are, among the higher clergy of the Turkish empire, some exceptions to the general rule of incompetence and moral unworthiness. The Greek bishops themselves who were established in their sees under the old regime, manifested by their open or tacit concurrence in the revolution that virtue had not completely died out under the pressure of a long slavery. Since the establishment of Grecian independence, the measures they have taken, in concert with the other members of the higher secular and monastic clergy and the government, for the amelioration of religion, are such as to reflect honor on themselves, and to give great promise for the future. They live in a simple and frugal manner, and some of them, instead of leaving millions of piastres to their relatives, like their Turkish brethren, have not left behind them enough money to defray their own funeral expenses. They endeavor to select the best subjects for ordination to the priesthood and to give them a good theological and religious training. Professorships of theological science are established in the University of Athens. The catechism is carefully taught to the young people and children, and every year ten of the most competent among the clergy are sent at the public expense to preach throughout all the towns and villages of the kingdom. Such is the happy result of the successful effort of these noble Greeks, so endeared to every lover of learning, valor, and [{15}] religion for the memories of their glorious antiquity, to shake off the yoke of the sultans and the patriarchs of Constantinople. It is this miserable amalgam of Moslem despotism, and usurped or abused spiritual power in the hands of a degenerate clergy at Constantinople, which is the great obstacle in the way of the regeneration of the East. We have already seen that the ecclesiastical tyranny of the patriarchate is now confined to the one hundred and forty-two small bishoprics, and the few millions of people included in them, which are situated in Turkey. Nevertheless, the political views of the Russian emperors, and the traditional reverence of the Russian clergy, still maintain the patriarch and his synod in a modified spiritual supremacy over the Russian Church, to which two-thirds of the Oriental rite belong. If Constantinople should fall into the hands of any of the great powers of Western Christendom, of course the Cara-Casan, or system of mixed ecclesiastical and civil despotism, will be overturned, the patriarch will become a mere primate among the other metropolitans of the nation, and the patriarchate be reduced to a simply honorary dignity like that of the Western patriarchs of Venice and Lisbon. If the Czar becomes the master of European Turkey, the same result will take place, with this only exception, that the See of Constantinople will become the primatial see of the Russian empire, and the Russian hierarchy will take the place of the effete Byzantine clergy, which they are far more worthy, from their learning and strict morality, to occupy.
What is to be the political and ecclesiastical destiny of the East, and Russia, its gigantic infant, who can foretell, without prophetic gifts? If the Russian emperors prove that they are destined and are worthy to begin anew and to fulfil the grand design of Constantine, Theodosius, Justinian, Pulcheria, and Irene, by creating a thoroughly Christian empire of the East, we shall rejoice to see them enthroned in Constantinople. If they are destined to restore the cross to the dome of St. Sophia, and to renovate the ancient glory of that temple, desecrated by Christian infamy more than by the Moslem crescent, we shall exult in their achievement. If new Chrysostoms and Gregories shall rise up to efface the dishonor of their predecessors, we will forget the past, and give them the homage due to true and worthy successors of the saints. We have no desire to see the Church of Constantinople degraded, or the Eastern Church humiliated. The Oriental Church is orthodox and catholic in its faith, and its several great rites are fully sanctioned and protected by the Holy See. The heresies which are found among a portion of its clergy are personal heresies, and have never been established by any great synod, or incorporated into their received doctrinal standards. We do not condemn the great body of its people of even formal schism, but rather compassionate them as suffering from a state of schism which has been forced on them by a designing and unworthy faction, and is perpetuated in great part through misunderstanding, prejudice, and national antipathies. The causes and grounds of this unnatural state must necessarily come up among them very soon for a more thorough investigation. Study, thought, discussion, and contact with Western Catholicism, as well as Western Protestantism and rationalism, will compel them to place themselves face to face with their own hereditary and traditional dogmas; and either to be consistent with themselves, and submit to the supremacy of the Roman See, or to give up their orthodoxy and open the doors to a religious revolution. We cannot deny that the latter alternative is possible, although we are sure that Dr. Pusey, and men like-minded with him, would deplore it as a great calamity. We trust it will be otherwise. The Easter morning of resurrection, which [{16}] we are now celebrating, dawned for us in the East. It is the land, of Christ and his apostles, the birth-place of our religion. We hope the day of resurrection for its decayed and languishing churches may not be far distant.
From The Month.
SAINTS OF THE DESERT.
BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.
1. Abbot Antony pointed out to a brother a stone, and said to him, "Revile that stone, and beat it soundly."